Ren waved hello in turn to the girl who had just entered the room, only vaguely remembering that she was the one eavesdropping on them all the night prior, before more familiar faces seemed to file in. While the okami (whose name he hadn't quite caught last night) seemed to be a man of few words, the oni was just as raucous as she had been last night. He couldn't deny the 'coward' claim, sadly enough, but to be fair, he had no weapons or anything then! At the very least, he could be a pack mu-

The sudden appearance of the electric teenager demanding to move through the portal caught Ren off guard, his head jerking to look over at her before noticing the (assumed) weapon bundled beneath layers of cloth. The glint of metal caught his eye for a moment, and Ren realized not long after that she was indeed carrying an [i]actual[/i] weapon.

What the hell?!

Before he could make a remark on the situation, a few of the others arrived, including one face he wasn't familiar with in the least. While the two older men attempted to calm her down (mainly the dullahan, but thank the gods for rationality), the spontaneous questions of the one who Ren had internally dubbed as '[i]that guy[/i]' didn't seem to help the situation as much as it seemed to be pestering for the sake of personal curiosity.

And how the hell did he know it was a kidnapping?!

Before Ren could make his own remarks on the situation, though, Izawa walked in with an exasperated expression on his face.

"Calm yourself, Miss Tanikawa. We became aware of the incident soon after dawn broke over the horizon, but before any of that, I need to relay a few messages to you all... As it seems that [i]some[/i] people would ask and leave without an answer," he stated, glancing at Aya for a moment before placing her gift off to the side. "First and foremost: if I haven't said it yesterday, I shall state so now: I have no idea what will happen if someone past the portal consumes a pill. I strongly urge you to consider the costs and benefits to doing so if ever given the chance, though I do ask that you report any results if you do go through with such actions. With any luck, you may succeed and allow us to learn more about the nature of that illness.
Next--and this is addressed to everyone here--there have been a few reported cases of missing people since last night. I would assume one of them is Miss Tanikawa's friend; am I correct?"

Without even waiting for a response, Izawa walked over to the requests board and calmly waved his hand over it, seemingly creating three pieces of paper out of thin air, and on each was written the name of a different person and a description of their appearance.

"Interesting magic trick, is it not? In any case, this leads me to my next point. After last night's incident, one of the miko examined the talisman that you used to seal away the gashadokuro last night and found a very interesting inscription on it. By applying it to a few of the charms that we already had here at the shrine, we were able to create small bounding arrays that can be used to reduce the onset of infection. The problems, though, are twofold; one, the array only sustains four people at maximum, with each be carrying one charm on them to activate its effect; two, that travelling near another group with a similar array will cause both to malfunction and cease to work until you move a sufficient distance away from another. The charms themselves will be on loan but free otherwise, considering how you will all be forced to work in small teams.

Considering how Miss Tanikawa's acquaintance is likely on the line here, I will let her pick out the members of her team from among you all. The rest of you may decide among yourselves how to divide up. The charms are hanging on the side wall over there, if you haven't noticed already; the reward for each person saved will be 20000 yen, split among the group that successfully escorts them back. I wish you the best of luck."

With that explanation done, Ren's brow furrowed as he walked over to look at the listings, then back over to Ayumi. To say he wouldn't mind being part of any group right now was a bit of an understatement, but given the results of last night, it seemed unlikely that anyone would want to listen to him if he was to take the role of 'leader'...